openstack team mailing list archive

[Clint Byrum <clint.byrum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Excerpts from Philipp Wollermann's message of Thu Apr 05 17:16:29 -0700 2012:
> On Apr 5, 2012, at 18:47, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> 
> > Philipp Wollermann wrote:
> >> am I right, that the official packages of openstack (nova) for Ubuntu 11.10 (oneiric) were never updated to Diablo 2011.3.1 and no bug-fixes from after the initial release were ever included?
> >> I checked the change log of the nova packages, and it seems like the maintainers only fixed security issues.
> > 
> > The stable/diablo branches, and the resulting 2011.3.1 release, are a
> > cross-distro effort to maintain a stable version of past releases. Each
> > distribution of OpenStack follows its own rules on what patches it
> > backports, in the case of Ubuntu itself, it follows:
> > 
> > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates
> 
> Thank you for the explanation. I understand that some users would rather live with known unfixed bugs than the risk of introducing new ones through a fix and that this is the way Ubuntu handles updates to packages.
> 
> However, I was wondering, because nova is already part of the SRU process, yet the latest version of nova in ubuntu-proposed is hanging in this state since 4 months. Even if it ever gets released to ubuntu-updates, it's probably outdated again.
> 
> It's totally acceptable if Ubuntu chooses to handle their packages like this, providing a very stable and reliable base system - though as it is also the primary and kind of "official" platform for OpenStack deployments, I think it would be greatly appreciated if there would be an officially maintained PPA which contains the most up-to-date stable release of OpenStack for the latest version(s) of Ubuntu.
> Then, users themselves could choose whether to trust and track the official releases or stick to Ubuntu's releases.
> 

As a member of the team that reviews these updates, I've suggested that
OpenStack's components be given a micro-release exception. These are
pretty normal for projects with the level of active QA that OpenStack
receives, and the policies around the stable branch are 100% compatible
with that.

The Ubuntu tech board response to this was that its a good idea,
but that we should first push a few of these versions through with the
usual process which involves verifying *every* bug fix. That is where the
oneiric-proposed nova package is at right now.. awaiting verification. You
can see on the "SRU report" for Ubuntu that nova has quite a few fixes
to verify:

http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-archive/pending-sru.html

I think even if this version does not progress to oneiric-updates,
we've proven that the micro-release exception is needed, and thus far,
no regressions have appeared. So, I'm hopeful that Essex will be granted
a full micro release exception for 12.04 and we can ship those updates
on a periodic basis.